Love Letter
by Kiera Kingsley
Summary: When a friend and fellow detective receives gifts from a mysterious admirer, Eames takes it upon herself to investigate--with unusual results.
1. Chapter 1

Because after the combined angst of "Trigger Factor" and "Delusional", I need a break. At least for a few chapters. :-)  
  
***  
  
Eames wiped a smudge off her bathroom mirror with the cuff of her blouse, rubbing the foggy glass clean. Bunching up her sleeves around her arms, she dashed a spray of cold water across her face and slurped up a mouthful from the tap.  
  
She had just spat out a mouthful of toothpaste slime when she heard it. Tossing aside her toothbrush--it landed in the toilet with a wet splash-- she stumbled sleepily out of the room and towards the ringing phone.  
  
The receiver lifted with a click. "Hello?" she mumbled, still drowsy.  
  
"Alex," the voice of her friend Radha complained in a grumpy whine, "why?"  
  
"Um." Eames was not quite picture-perfect on Monday mornings. "Uh... if you're asking why Tom Cruise won't return any of your calls, it's because he gets stalked by thousands of other rabid, drooling fans, and if you're asking why your clothes are all in the wash and you have nothing to wear--"  
  
"Alex, I am standing on my doorstep up to my knees in flowers. They're all wrapped in this tissue paper with red ribbons. It's cold outside and I'm shivering in my pajamas, and my dog is trying to tear the bouquets apart. Why on God's earth did you do this?"  
  
"But I didn't do it!" protested Eames truthfully; unfortunately, this was the same defense she'd used after a series of prank calls that had left Radha fuming at her for a week.  
  
Radha scoffed, snorted, and then hung up in a snit, leaving a bemused Eames on the other line. The petite detective wandered back into her bathroom, absently fishing her toothbrush out of the toilet and sticking it in her mouth before spitting it out in disgust.  
  
***  
  
At work, Eames had just settled down in her seat when Radha came storming over, her arms full of glossy red blossoms. "Here, you can have them!" she yelled, and flung the whole mess onto Eames's desk.  
  
Goren came into two minutes later to see Eames staring dazedly at the overflowing pile of scented tulips. "A secret admirer?" he said with a smile.  
  
"Not mine, Radha's," Eames replied automatically. "She found these on her doorstep this morning."  
  
"Radha...?"  
  
"We used to work on the Vice Squad together," she explained, picking up one of the bundles and burying her nose in it, inhaling deeply. "These are gorgeous..."  
  
"And expensive," Goren put in, sitting down. "A single bunch of tulips usually goes for about sixty-five dollars, and there are--" he did a rapid count, "twenty-four bunches here. That's over fifteen hundred dollars. Who bought them for her?"  
  
"No clue." Eames let out an exasperated sigh. "What am I going to do with all of these?"  
  
She ended up keeping a single bouquet and regretfully threw out the rest into a dumpster in a nearby alleyway during a coffee break. Besides a couple of teasing remarks, Radha's baleful glares, and her grumbled vows of revenge throughout the day, nothing else unexpected happened. Eames closed a case with Goren and tossed off some paperwork, went out with him afterwards for a drink, and went to bed early.  
  
***  
  
Tuesday morning Eames woke up to Radha's shrill cries on the phone. "Alex! Who the bloody hell do you think you are?"  
  
"More flowers?" Eames mumbled sleepily.  
  
"There are roses all over my front porch!" Radha bellowed. "Alex, this isn't funny! Why are you doing this?"  
  
"Radha, I swear, it's not me." Eames brushed back her hair with a lazy sweep of her hand, blinking her bleary eyes. "Why don't you check and see if there's a card this time?"  
  
She heard rustling and crackling on the other line, along with the frantic woofs of Amber, Radha's golden retriever. "Nothing," her friend groused crossly after several minutes. "Who's doing this?"  
  
"Let me know if you find out," and Eames hung up, snuggling down in her covers and drifting back off to sleep again.  
  
***  
  
Wednesday brought a huge cluster of purple lilacs; Thursday saw a fresh pile of peach blossoms. By this point Radha was frantic, making thousands of phone calls and faxing the delivery company.  
  
Eames prickled at the stifled snickers behind Radha's back and furiously glared down the offenders until they blushed and looked away. She was in a tetchy temper and snapped angrily at Goren when he ventured a compliment on her clothes.  
  
She remained grouchy until mid-morning, when Radha skidded to a halt, breathless and flushed, in front of Eames's desk. "Alex! I finally found out who's making the deliveries!"  
  
"Who?" Eames asked instantly, flinging aside the folder she'd been working on.  
  
"You'll never guess." Radha waited for a moment, grinning delightedly at the frustrated impatience on Eames's face, and then burst out, "It's Detective Johnston! You know, in the Major Case Squad?"  
  
***  
  
My most abject and humble apologies to Moony-Loony-Lupin for stealing Johnston; I can't help it, he's such an awesome character :-) I promise to return him (relatively) unharmed...  
  
Review, please! 


	2. Chapter 2

A big hug and kiss to daf9, Kiki, Vera, Aingeal, Zoiy, Datura, and waterfall for their wonderful reviews--thank you much! :-)  
  
***  
  
Detective Johnston had a headache. A throbbing, pounding, painful, aching, agonizing, excruciating headache. Those three glasses of vodka at the bar last night had been one of the worst mistakes of his life. He slumped down lifelessly in his chair, his glazed eyes red-ringed and swollen, his jaw hanging slackly, and his tongue lolling limply out of the corner of his mouth, uttering a faint, feeble whimper.  
  
Suddenly, without warning, a woman's face appeared above his. He squinted and blinked the blurriness away, focusing on the features.  
  
Radha. It was Radha. The woman he dreamed about late at night, ever since he met her; the woman he loved hopelessly, devotedly, ardently; the woman he could never confess his feelings to in a million years.  
  
The woman who was kissing him very enthusiastically right about now.  
  
"Radhaaaahhh?" His eyes flew wide open in surprise, his question muffled in her mouth.  
  
"Shhh," she said softly, with a sweetly tender look in her eyes. "I love you, too. Let's go out for dinner and a movie afterwards, and end up at my apartment... how does that sound?"  
  
"OK," he gurgled.  
  
"It's a date." Radha kissed him again, tangling her hands in his short hair, before releasing him with a wink. "See you tonight, sweetheart." And she strolled languidly back to her desk.  
  
"She loves me," Johnston breathed incredulously, his eyes shining. "She loves me! She loves me!" With a wildly cheerful, incoherent yell, he danced and leaped down the hallway on joyously light feet--and promptly crashed into Eames. "Ouch--ow!--oh, sorry, Eames--she loves me!"  
  
"She should," Eames replied, getting enough of her breath back to grin whole-heartedly. "After all those flowers you sent her--"  
  
"Flowers?" Johnston was still beaming from ear to ear. "What flowers?"  
  
***  
  
"How could someone get a hold of your credit card number?" Eames persisted, tapping her fingers on the desk as Johnston frantically rifled through his papers. They had spent the last hour making a succession of phone calls to the delivery company and Johnston's local bank, discovering that close to eight thousand dollars--undoubtedly spent on the flower deliveries--had gone missing from his personal account.  
  
"I don't know!" cried the poor detective miserably, a haggard, hunted look on his face. "I mean, I always keep an eye on all my bills and receipts--"  
  
"Do you do any shopping over the Web?" She winced as Johnston immediately blushed a fire-engine shade of red and deafened her with a shout of "No! Never! Only once, and that was for a--uh, a--a private occasion!"  
  
"A private occasion?" she tried tentatively.  
  
"I'm not talking about it!" Johnston folded his mouth shut stubbornly, fuming at her in silence.  
  
"Johnston--" Eames retorted, her long-suffering patience worn thin.  
  
"Eames?" She and Johnston both swiveled about, startled, to see Goren leaning against the wall. "Deakins needs to see us in his office."  
  
"Coming," Eames said automatically, glaring exasperatedly at Johnston as she got up. The detective dropped his eyes and softly grumbled, glowering back at her before burying his head in his arms as she left.  
  
*** 


	3. Chapter 3

Sorry about the delay in updating. To everyone who reviewed: you are all officially the sweetest, nicest, most amazing people in the world! :-)  
  
***  
  
The next morning, Johnston was blurry around the edges from a sleepless night of walking the floor. Draining two large cups of coffee did nothing to help, and he sighed as he sat down in his seat--or rather, the place where he thought his seat was. He collapsed at once to the floor with a heavy thud.  
  
"Are you OK?" Radha was peering at him over the desk.  
  
Johnston hastily scrambled to his feet, slipped on a stray piece of garbage, and sprawled on the floor again. "Yeah," he mumbled, blushing beet red as he--very slowly and carefully--got up.  
  
Radha smiled and slipped her hand through her hair, brushing it back nervously. "I, um, I just wanted to say... I really, really like you. You're one of the sweetest guys I've ever known, and you've been amazing, doing all this for me..." She was fiddling with a loose thread on her pink blouse cuff. "But, uh, I... I really can't accept this. It's just... it's too much. I appreciate the thought, I do, and it's beautiful, but it's..."  
  
She handed him the small black box she'd been hiding behind her back. Johnston slowly curled his fingers around it and released it from her grasp, lifting it from her hands. "It's a gorgeous necklace," Radha continued, a pleading note creeping into her voice. "But all those diamonds... I mean, they must have cost a fortune. I really can't take this, it's not fair."  
  
She suddenly smiled and took his hands, clasping them gently. "You don't have to do this, you know. You've already won me over." And she kissed him soundly for emphasis, before being reluctantly called back to her desk; she winked at him and blew a rosy, red-lipped kiss before disappearing through the doorway.  
  
Johnston stayed frozen where he was, his jaw slumped in a wide gape and a staggered look in his eyes. The little black box dangled from his fingers. "D-d-diamonds?" he spluttered out.  
  
"Call the bank and freeze your account right away," was Eames's advice when she heard the story. She was sitting at her desk with a pen in hand, facing the trembling, tense detective.  
  
"A diamond necklace," Johnston moaned, banging his head against the desk and crumpling a few pages of Goren's latest report. "I'm dead. I'm toast. I'm dead toast."  
  
"Maybe it's only one diamond," Eames offered, holding out her free hand. "Let's have a look."  
  
Johnston shoved the box towards her and covered his face with his hands. Eames flipped open the lid and was silent for a few long minutes. "Is it just one?" he whispered hoarsely through his fingers.  
  
For her answer, she took the starry, shimmering thread of polished diamonds out of its velvet shell and curled it in her palm, letting it sparkle in the light. Johnston stared at it, then slumped limply to the floor as he fainted away.  
  
***  
  
Goren came in the next day, unwinding the scarf from his neck and stamping out the snow on his boots, to find Eames busy at her computer. "What're you working on?" he asked lightly, leaning over her shoulder to see.  
  
"Remember I told you about Johnston?" Eames was flushed, frustrated, exhausted, thirsty, and triumphant. "It turns out that the only time he ever gave out his credit card number over the Internet was to an online dating service."  
  
Goren let out a soft snigger, which quickly changed to a cough at Eames's glare. "What did he give out his credit card number for?" he asked, to divert her attention.  
  
"He ordered a bouquet of roses from the site, for one of his dates," she answered, tapping away at the keyboard and clicking the mouse. "The only other people he gives his credit card number to are his electric company, his phone company, his hydro company... safe, reputable places. If anybody's using his number, it's this place. So."  
  
"So?" he prompted.  
  
"So I have a plan," Eames finished exultantly, making the website vanish with a click and a beep before beginning to describe her idea to him.  
  
*** 


	4. Chapter 4

Radha was just tossing back the last gulp of coffee in her mug when she saw it: a crimson crush of red roses, a bright bouquet sitting amid the pile of papers on the desk.  
  
She quickly bent over and rustled the tissue paper, untying the silky ribbons. The little card was taped to the back of the bundle of flowers; she tore it off and held it up to the light. "To the loveliest girl in the world, with my best and fondest wishes--Brad Pitt?"  
  
Eames came up behind her, still in her coat and scarf as she rummaged through her bag. "Where--huh? Radha, what are you--wait, what are those?" She pointed to the bouquet, confusion written all over her face.  
  
"Nice try, Alex." Radha replaced the roses back on Eames's desk with a smug grin. "You know, I bet you're just jealous."  
  
"Jealous? Of Johnston?" Eames raised both eyebrows. "He calls my partner 'Gore Gore'!"  
  
"Shut up!" Radha interrupted her instantly, her cheeks flushing pink. "I think it's... I think it's cute. I like it. It's... um, it's sweet, and... stop it! It's not funny! You're just jealous and now you're being mean about it!" And off she stormed in a sulk, tossing her white china mug into the garbage with a muffled thud.  
  
Eames was still giggling quietly to herself when she found her car keys, after an intense search of her pockets, black leather bag, and desk drawers, ten minutes later. Goren came in, did a double take, and burst into a hearty laugh: "Brad Pitt?"  
  
"Oh, yes," she simpered, clutching a rose to her heart melodramatically. "It was such a beautiful romance, but--" a prolonged, deep sigh, "--we just weren't meant to be together."  
  
***  
  
Brad Pitt apparently had other ideas.  
  
The next afternoon Eames clumped up to her apartment, squelching through trails of wet snow and slush on the stairs. She emerged into the third- floor hallway and stopped short, stunned by the sight in front of her.  
  
The hallway outside her door was lushly carpeted with flowers--fragrant drifts of soft pink petals as high as her knees. She floundered awkwardly through masses of tissue paper and ribbons as she stooped down, gathering bouquets into her arms in a vain attempt to clear the hallway.  
  
"What the--?" Her next door neighbour, a short, balding man in his late sixties, trundled outside to view the mess with his bathrobe and slippers still on. "Alex, what have you done this time?"  
  
"Nothing," Eames called back cheerfully, shoving open her front door with a loud thud. "You want one?"  
  
"No, thanks," he mumbled, shaking his head and wandering back inside to his newspaper and scrambled eggs.  
  
***  
  
The actor was even more amorous the next day, sending dozens of golden roses to be stacked outside Eames's doorstep. The detective shook her head as she read the tiny white cards, tearing them to shreds and tossing them into the garbage; save for three small bundles, the flowers were all carted out to the dumpster before she drove off to work.  
  
"How's the plan going?" Goren asked, passing her a cup of coffee, when Eames joined him at their desk.  
  
"I think it's time to pay the guys at Johnston's website a visit," she answered with a smile, lifting her cup to him in a silent salute and picking up a pen.  
  
*** 


End file.
